Datawind Sets Goal To Offer $20 Android Tablet

Budget tablets are nothing new, there are plenty of them available on the market. There is a vision for some companies though to push the boundaries on how low cost they can make them, and one company is aiming to offer a tablet for a mere $20. The company is called Datawind, and they’re a Canadian company who currently offers a budget tablet that only costs consumers $37.99. The UbiSlate 7Ci is already low cost, much more low cost than anything else we’ve heard about so far, and with $20 as Datawind’s new goal they are definitely setting the bar high.(or low depending on how you want to look at it).

The vision of Datawind on a larger scale is not to provide low cost tablets to consumers, but bridge the digital divide for those who might have trouble accessing internet because of a lack of the ability to afford such a device that can connect to it. So in attempting to bridge the digital divide across many emerging markets and areas where the affordability of high cost and high-end tablets is minimal, Datawind is pushing to achieve there goals by producing low cost tablets. Basically the low cost tablets are serving as a means to an end.

At current there are three tablet offerings from Datawind. The Wifi only tablet offered for only $37.99 that we talked about above, and two other available options. One that costs $80 called the UbiSlate 7C+ which adds the capability to connect to the internet via Edge networks, and lastly the UbiSlate 3G7 which can connect to the internet with 3G speeds for $129.99. All three devices offer varied specs, none of which are extremely powerful but the aim is not to provide high-end tablets with outstanding specifications. Datawind is going for consumers who are looking for the lowest cost option to get online. Datawind envisions being able to drop the price of their Aakash line of budget tablets below $20 bucks over the next 12 to 24 months, given that they see a growth in ad and app revenues. Part of how they were able to keep the cost to consumer pricing so low is because they opted to sell their tablets directly to the consumer by way of their website, instead of trying to sell them through retail partners.